


this is not an escape

by LilyEllison



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Comics-Influenced, F/M, Mentions of Cancer, Mentions of Sick Foggy Nelson, Oral Sex, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:33:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23569126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilyEllison/pseuds/LilyEllison
Summary: After her encounter with Fisk, Karen leaves New York, spending months on the run. And then one day Matt shows up on her doorstep.
Relationships: Matt Murdock/Karen Page
Comments: 23
Kudos: 36





	this is not an escape

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks, as always, to irelandhoneybee and Quietshade. <3

_—you can only hold your breath so long—_

Some piece of her always suspects that one day, Matt Murdock will show up at her door.

She hopes for it — hopes in the way that little green spikes shooting up in the spring hope. And she dreads it. Dreads it like black ice, like drowning.

But now that the moment has arrived, she’s frozen.

"What are you doing here?" Karen asks, holding the door open and staring at him. He looks like himself, which is to say very, very good. He's wearing jeans and a button-down, and the red of his glasses, the white of his cane, the roughness of his knuckles — it's all heartbreakingly familiar.

"Just in the neighborhood. Thought I'd stop by," he says, with a smile that’s chilly around the edges.

(In her springtime of hope, Matt on her doorstep always led to irrepressible laughter and long embraces. In her winter of dread, he stayed only long enough to tell her was better off without her, they all were, before turning on his heel.)

"Fine," she says flatly, stepping back to open the door wider. "Just—come in."

He does, gripping his cane tightly, picking up his overnight bag. The fading daylight is golden in the Iowa countryside beyond her porch and she sweeps a glance around for passing cars as she shuts the door behind him. You can never be too careful. But all she sees is the lone airport taxi crunching down her driveway.

"You flew?" she asks, surprised. Of course he did, it wasn't like he drove from New York. But the thought of Matt on a plane, of him moving through the sky under a power not his own, seems as foreign to her as the idea of him behind the wheel.

"First time for everything," he says, and his smile warms a little.

"How was it?" she can't help but ask.

"Oh, it was awful." But that makes a real grin break out across his cheeks and suddenly, it’s all she can do not to pull him close. Despite the careful steps she's taken, all the hell she's put herself through, it's been a long time since she's had a feeling of safety. And there’s one place she's always been able to find it.

"How are you, Karen?" he asks sincerely, and the sound of her name, her _real_ name, makes her bite her lip. She hasn't heard it since the day she left New York. She hasn’t heard it in more than a year.

_—you’ll say i was bound to leave—_

"I can help you." The words caught Karen off-guard, coming as they did on the heels of the revelation that the nun standing in front of her in the cool churchyard sunshine was Matt's _mother_.

"Please," she said. "Let me do something for you. For Matthew."

That was all it took. Karen met Sister Maggie's imploring brown eyes, and in that moment, they became conspirators — collaborators in guilt and shame and running away. They had both betrayed him. Maggie by giving him up, and Karen by giving up his identity to his worst enemy. And it was ironic, looking back at it, that Maggie's way of trying to make up for abandoning her son was helping Karen leave him, too.

But Karen understood that what Sister Maggie was trying to do was protect her, in the same way that Matt always wanted to protect her. And Karen also understood that she was going to trust this tiny, frail-looking nun to help her disappear, in the same way she'd trusted a blind lawyer to keep her safe.

This was her version of faith.

Maggie escorted Karen into the church basement to wait, but she was only there for about an hour when Maggie reappeared, breathless with nervous excitement. "There’s a priest at St. Stephen’s who is leaving today, taking two young women to a safehouse in the Midwest. Would you like to go with them? It’s not halfway around the world, but...”

“I’ll go,” Karen said, nodding.

When Father Tom pulled up to the church later, Maggie took both of her hands. “God bless you, Karen,” Maggie said softly. She didn’t know it, but that _Karen_ , the last _Karen_ , would echo for miles. For months.

Karen did know what to say when Father Tom asked, “What should I call you?” — not “What’s your name?” of course. She answered immediately, without conscious thought.

“Paige,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m Paige Matthews.”

_—we are not alone, and we are more alone than we’ve ever been—_

"How did you find me?" Karen says, ignoring what Matt asked. _How are you?_ isn't a question either of them really wants to hear her answer to right now.

"I paid Jessica Jones to track you down. If it makes you feel better, it took her even longer than I expected." He puts his bag down, folds up his cane. He takes his time with it. Finally, he continues, "I'm a little embarrassed to say that the break in the case may have come from my mother."

Anger flashes through her. _Dammit, Maggie_. How very Murdock of her to think that she knew what was best for everyone.

"She thought you'd come back," Matt adds softly. "We all did."

Karen clenches her hands tightly and closes her eyes for a long moment. Then she takes a deep breath and asks, "Are you going to tell me why you're here?"

Matt sighs. "Can we sit?"

"Just tell me." She's got a go-bag stashed in the closet near the door. She can leave in minutes and not miss a single thing left behind.

"It's Foggy," Matt says, his voice grave. "He's sick."

Karen doesn't know exactly what she's been expecting — Matt to warn her of some danger from Fisk, or to tell her of something else that she's fucked up along the way without knowing it. But not this. Not Foggy. It can't be Foggy. She braces herself, pressing a hand against the door.

"But he's OK, right?" she asks, a jagged edge to her voice. Tears itch in the back of her throat.

"They expect him to pull through," Matt says. "It's cancer. Ewing's sarcoma. The treatment is rough." Matt swallows, and Karen can see his eyes dampen, too. "He told me that the best medicine he could think of would be seeing you again. Having the three of us together. I—I told him I'd try."

His voice cracks painfully and she breaks, stepping toward him and throwing her arms around his neck. He squeezes her so tightly it hurts, but she only wishes he'd squeeze harder. She turns her face, her nose against his jaw, breathing him in. _This_. Oh, god, this. It's comfort and safety and—

She realizes that they've been swaying together, almost like they're slow dancing, and she quickly jerks away.

But Matt reaches out and grips her arms, not letting her get too far. "I’m taking a flight back to New York tomorrow. Come with me. For Foggy's sake."

Her throat feels like it's swollen closed and she shakes off his grasp. Only when the heat of his touch has faded can she speak again. "You're probably hungry," she says inadequately.

He huffs out a long, defeated breath. "At least think about it."

She walks toward her kitchen without waiting to see if he'll follow.

_—my love songs are always the grieving kind—_

It was in the kitchen of the safehouse in Indiana that she realized that Paige Matthews was a terrible fucking fake name. Not much of a cover.

But she used it again anyway. She kept using it. Maybe it was something of a dare. She had betrayed his identity, so if she was discovered because she held onto a piece of it, it would only be what she deserved.

She clung to a piece of Foggy, too, folding the money he'd given her in a special way so that she'd know not to spend it unless she was desperate. His voice haunted her. _We're going to get through this. I don't know how, but we will._

She wouldn't. But, god, she hoped they did. It was all she thought about, spending long hours staring at their smiling faces in the photo they'd taken on that long-ago St. Patrick's Day.

She moved around as often as she could, traveled from link to link on a chain of contacts through the church. When word came that Fisk was back in prison, she wept with relief. But as she gobbled down the welcome news, she choked on the gristle. Fisk was in prison, but a priest in Hell's Kitchen had been killed by the imposter in the Daredevil suit. She knew with an awful, suffocating certainty that this was her fault. Matt's priest, his holy father, was dead because Karen accepted Sister Maggie's offer of help. She made the church a target. There was more blood on her hands.

She couldn't go back. She was a gory King Midas, killing everything she touched. It was only a matter of time before that included Matt and Foggy, too. Maybe that was why she could never accept that Matt was dead after the Midland Circle collapse. It was impossible to believe that someone she cared about could die without it somehow being her fault.

She needed to move on again. She was sick of sad, anonymous Midwestern cities, sick of her dark-haired reflection in the mirror. She used the chain of whispers again and found herself headed for Iowa. A farmhouse well outside Des Moines, where she would only have to see people if she chose to. A safehouse that would keep everyone safe from her.

When she got there, she stowed her go-bag in the closet, the St. Patrick's Day photo tucked inside. She couldn't bear to ever lose it, but she didn't want to look anymore.

Running away from home felt worse than all those other times, when home had run away from her.

_—forget i said love (and also, don’t forget i said love)—_

She waits until Matt finishes the food she puts in front of him — beef stew, bread she baked herself. She has lots of time to cook now. Nothing from the diner, of course. Her grandmother's recipes instead. She remembers floury hands and flowery aprons and the Beatles on the oldies station on weekend afternoons.

She rinses the dishes and puts them in the dishwasher. For an out-of-the-way farmhouse, it's well-applianced, and it's a luxury to have a dishwasher and her own washer and dryer after New York. Or, it would be, if she didn't have so much damn time to fill. If she wasn't just ticking through empty hours.

"It's too dangerous," she says, still standing at the sink, looking out the window at the moon kissing the cornfield. "I want to see Foggy, of course I do. But I'm sure he'll be OK. And I'm sure he'll understand that I can't risk it."

She doesn't turn around. She doesn't want to see Matt's face. The disappointment. Or, worse, the relief.

"Fisk's in prison," Matt says evenly. "You do know that, right? That had to make the news, even here."

"Yeah, well, he's been in prison before," Karen says, wiping her hands on a dish towel. She throws it down on the counter, feeling a surge of irritation. "If Jessica Jones found me, if you found me, someone else could do it. That taxi driver is going to remember picking up a blind guy at the airport and driving him to the middle of nowhere. I need to find a new place to hide, not paint a target on my head by waltzing into Manhattan."

"I'll keep you safe, Karen."

She whirls then, finally looks at the firm set of his jaw, at his hands folded tightly on the table in front of him. He looks exactly like he did the first time she heard those words.

And it's exactly what she wants to hear now. She wants to go back and be that Karen again. She wants to let him take her home. She wants to make him hold her for hours, until the thick layers of guilt and fear and sadness iced around her heart finally melt. But she can't.

"I made a deal," he begins, but she cuts him off.

"You should worry about yourself, Matt, and—and Foggy. Not me."

He stands up then, his chair scraping back loudly, his temper seeping around the edges of his careful words. "You think I've stopped worrying about you? Even for a second? I still hear the ghost of you in every crowd. Not knowing where you are, if you’re OK — it’s horrible."

Her own anger rises to meet his. “Believe me, I know how that feels.”

“Is that what this is about? Getting back at me?” He clenches his fists. “I’m sorry for what I put you through. I really am. But that was—after I woke up, it was only a few _weeks_ before I... It wasn’t this.”

She runs her hands through her hair in exasperation. “Of course it’s not about getting back at you. It’s safer this way.” She shakes her head. “You don't need me around."

She watches as he takes off his glasses and rubs his face. He looks so tired. She hadn't noticed that before.

“You're right," he says finally, putting the glasses down on the table. "It hasn’t been easy, but I've survived. I don't need you. But, Karen, I've _wanted_ you. Every day since you left."

She's breathless. "I can't," she chokes out, shaking her head. "Thank you for coming all this way and telling me about Foggy. But I can't go back with you." It feels like the space around her is slowly filling with cement.

"You've never been a coward. You're the bravest person I know. Why do you want to keep running?"

She swallows hard. "I betrayed you, Matt. Have you forgotten that?"

"Betrayed me how? Fisk already knew who I was, and I would have told you that if you hadn't—if you hadn't turned tail and run."

She gapes at him. All this time, she thought...

"I kept praying that you'd come back," he says, softly now, "but I guess I have to accept that you don't want to."

"That's not—"

"You're not the Karen Page I knew anymore. You really are someone else."

His words crack into the ice in her chest hard enough to make her wince. "I guess I am."

She stalks out of the kitchen to get linens from the hall closet and dumps them on the couch, skimming away her traitorous tears and hoping they won't carry to him on the air.

Then she goes into her bedroom and slams the door.

_—i don’t know how to hold someone without losing my grip—_

By the time she moved to Iowa, Karen knew she should cut ties with the church completely and disappear into thin air. But she didn't. Her contacts were able to find her work — under-the-table jobs that didn’t require her to sell her body or her soul. (And maybe, deep down, she needed that breadcrumb trail for him to follow, even if she’d never admit it, even to herself.)

Her Iowa job was keeping the books and doing administrative work for a small construction company that didn't make her come into the office often and didn't flinch at paying in cash. Going back to being a secretary for a construction firm seemed like a major step in the wrong direction, but there really weren't many jobs you could get without ID. She didn’t make all that much, but she didn’t really need to. The cost of living was low, and she didn't buy much or travel.

With all the free time she had, she kept telling herself she'd finally write a book or _something_. But Paige Matthews never seemed to have anything to say.

At least she could read. She had one sure way to forget for a while that she had a life and left it. She buried herself in 464,234 words of The Count of Monte Cristo. And then she went In Search of Lost Time.

She wondered sometimes if anyone out there still worried about what happened to her. Foggy knew, and she was sure that meant Matt knew, but what about Ellison? Her dad? Sometimes she cringed at the thought of what Frank Castle would say. She could hear it — his deep, rumbling disappointment.

_You let go, Karen. You let go._

_—i am no less bound to you—_

She leaves her bed in the middle of the night, after hours of trying to sleep and failing. Thinking of Foggy. Thinking of Matt. Being driven crazy by the knowledge that after tomorrow, she'll never see either one of them again.

Matt’s nearness, his presence in the very next room after so much time apart, thrums under her skin until she can’t stay still. _I’ve wanted you_ , he said.

When she tiptoes out to the living room, she sees Matt sleeping unguardedly on the couch. He doesn't seem to be haunted like she is, or maybe he's so exhausted from his day of travel that even the gnaw of stress can't keep him awake.

She kneels down at his side, soaking in the beauty of his face in the moonlight. He looks more like an angel than the Devil, with his halo of silver and his serene expression. She knows she shouldn't be here, she should at the very least let him get some rest before he leaves, but she can't say she's upset when the proximity of her heartbeat coaxes him awake. "Karen?" he mumbles sleepily.

She reaches out and caresses his face. "Matt," she sighs. She runs her fingers gently through his hair as he surfaces from dreamland.

"I’m sorry, Karen," he murmurs. “I shouldn’t have—“

"Shhh.." She traces his stubbled jaw, his lips, his eyebrows, wanting to store it all up for the lonely future ahead. And when he reaches up to capture her hands with his own, she leans down and kisses him.

For one endless second, her stomach sinks with painful regret. But then Matt kisses her back. He kisses her like he’s been craving this as much as she has. He tugs her up from the floor and she settles herself half on top of him, the long line of his body matching hers almost exactly. Her nose goes right for his neck again, as if she could breathe him in hard enough to keep him. He’s got one arm anchoring her to him and he's stroking her hair and her back with his other hand.

And for a little bit, it's enough. Just to be next to him. Just to be touching him. Maybe she could even sleep like this, pressed tight to his dreamy warmth.

But then his hand drifts over a spot where her shirt has ridden up and his touch on her skin drives all thoughts of sleep from her mind.

"I—I've wanted you, too," she murmurs, the confession bubbling up unexpectedly. "I still dream of...this. Do you—?"

He answers with his lips before his voice, kissing her hard. "God, yes, Karen," he gasps. "All the time."

She lets herself sink into it, sink into him, into the warmth of his body and the wet heat of his mouth. His fingers continue to play over the stretch of her exposed skin, pushing her shirt up, making the part of her bare to him gradually larger. Impatient, she wiggles away from him, pushes up onto her knees, straddling one of his sleekly muscled thighs.

She strips off her shirt. "Matt," she says. "I want..." She tugs on his t-shirt until he sits up and pulls it over his head. He wants to get his hands on her, she can tell, but she pushes him back down with a firm palm on his chest.

Karen adjusts herself so she's hovering over his hips, feeling him hardening beneath her as she leans down to kiss him, to feel his skin against hers, to capture his wrists and press them down on either side of his head.

"I don't expect anything from you," she whispers in his ear. "I just—I need—"

 _I need something to live on_ , she thinks, but the words don't make their way out of her mouth. She's already too busy using it to kiss her way down his body — sipping at his neck, lavishing his chest, scraping her teeth over his nipple and laving it with her tongue as he groans. She holds his hands away for as long as she can reach them. And then she's moving lower, nuzzling his taut stomach, pressing kisses against the bulge in his soft boxers, and it's more important to use her hands to tug the fabric down instead.

"Karen," he chokes out.

"Tell me if you want me to stop," she says softly, getting close enough that her breath is caressing him already.

"Don't—don't stop," he whispers, and it turns into a stuttering gasp as she licks the little cleft of his cock, her tongue darting up to the tip to steal away the moisture there.

He keeps echoing her name as she takes him into her mouth, back toward her throat, as she sucks and bobs and licks. And, oh, god, she wants to keep him there as long as she can, but what's getting her even hotter than the taste of him, hotter than the deliciously erotic moans he's making, is that repeating chorus of her name. _Karen Karen Karen_.

She's missed that sound — and most of all she's missed it on his lips.

He warns her when he's close — "fuck, Karen, I'm gonna..." — but she doesn't let up until she's swallowing down everything he's giving her.

And just like that, it's over. She pulls back and she touches her hand to her lips as she breathes in a shaky breath. She fumbles for her shirt and she stands up, clutching it in front of her.

"Oh, god," she says. "I’m..."

"What is it?" Matt asks, his voice thick and confused. He sits up and gets to his feet. And before she can speak, before she can move away, or do anything at all, he has his arms around her. He's pulling her back from the black hole of panic. He kisses her, little tiny kisses all over her face, her hair, and she lets the shirt drop to her feet. She has to — holding onto him is the only way to stay upright.

“It’s OK, sweetheart. I’ve got you,” he says. And she believes him. She believes him.

He takes her to bed and he sets her ablaze, with his mouth, with his cock, with his voice.

The ice is gone, and all she wants to do is burn.

— _hurry up and lose me (hurry up and find me again)—_

Karen wakes up with her heart on fire. She feels warm down to her toes, and rested, and cared for, tucked tight in Matt’s arms, his chest a solid wall against her back. The only thing marring the sweet solace is the whisper of danger already echoing in her ears — she’s too comfortable, too complacent.

For the first time in months, she blocks it out. She’s not ready. She doesn’t know how she’s going to make herself give this up. She doesn’t know how she’ll go on with her life, knowing she could have had it.

Her only comfort is the memories. They’ll have to be feast enough to feed her through the lean years stretching out ahead. She closes her eyes again, not wanting this to end yet. Not wanting to say goodbye.

But all too soon, Matt’s rumbling sleepily in her ear. “What time is it?”

She forces herself to check the red digits on the cheap alarm clock on her nightstand. She tells him.

“We need to leave for the airport soon,” he says, pressing lazy kisses against her neck.

The ice prickles in tiny pinpoints through her chest. “You mean you do,” she corrects.

He stiffens, but then he tightens his arms around her, in a gesture of tender defiance. “You have to come with me,” he says. “Being together — this is right. I can’t be the only one who feels it.”

She winces. Of course she feels it. But she has to let him go. And she knows she should pull away now, rip off the band-aid and sting them both, but she can’t bring herself to do it. Not this time.

Sadly, she knows what to say to get him to do it for her.

“There are still things you don’t know about me, Matt,” she says. “It’s more than...James Wesley.”

“Is this about your brother?”

She gasps and she finally does break away, but only so she can see his face. He seems calm, unperturbed.

“Jessica found out all of that, too, Karen. I knew before I ever got on the plane. You made a mistake and you’ve had to live with it for all these years. You’ve worked hard to help other people.”

“Not lately,” she says guiltily. The only help she’s given anyone is to stay away from them. Though maybe that’s the best thing she can do.

“Then come back with me,” Matt says. “We'll keep Nelson and Murdock running until Foggy's healthy again. I told you it would be more fun as Nelson, Murdock and Page.”

“Yes” is what her mind screams, but “I don’t know” is what she whispers.

Matt sits up, agitated. “Fine, then. Just let me be with you. I'll go back to New York until Foggy's well and then I'll find you again.”

“Matt, no,” she says. She sits up too, feeling like she should definitely be wearing clothes for this conversation, but maybe naked honesty is what they need. “Hell's Kitchen is a part of you. And Foggy too. I couldn't make you leave it all behind — I would never accept that.”

“Karen, tell me the truth,” he says, anguished. “If you don’t want me...”

“That’s not fair,” she says. “I can’t lie to you. I can’t tell you I don’t love you for your own good. I... How do I make you understand? This is for you. I stayed away for you and Foggy, to keep you alive.” Her hot tears are spilling over now. “I keep getting people killed.”

He finds her hand and grasps it tightly. “If it’s for me, if it’s for Foggy, then we’re both telling you to stop,” Matt says. “I’ve been where you are, Karen. I know how it feels. But it’s wrong. If this has taught me anything, it’s that. Look at what’s happening with Foggy. I have every hope he’ll make it through, but it’s not guaranteed. Nothing is. People like Fisk are not the only threats to us, and you staying away doesn’t keep us safe. It only guarantees that my heart’s going to be ripped out the minute I have to leave you.”

He kisses her desperately and she lets him — she kisses him back.

“Be Karen again,” he murmurs. “Please be our Karen again. Please come home.”

She can’t answer in words, so she nods into his neck with a hitching, halting, gasping noise that is half-sob, half-laugh.

Running away from home really was different from all those other times.

This time, home had come after her.

**Author's Note:**

> Titles from [“Empire Builder”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMamoan2JwA) by Laura Gibson. Foggy's cancer and Karen's fake name are both taken from the comics.


End file.
